


superdoom

by heartstringtheory



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Background Seokhao If You Tilt Your Head And Squint, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mentions of Past Wonshua, Navigating the Confusing Space Between Platonic and Romantic Relationships, Physics Major Wonwoo, Slice of Life, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 03:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstringtheory/pseuds/heartstringtheory
Summary: Wonwoo thinks about Soonyoung mostly in terms of classical physics.





	superdoom

**Author's Note:**

> i love jeon wonwoo and the horoscope police will NEVER catch me for engaging with water signs
> 
> anyway hi i've been gone a while and i wrote this to get out of my 4 month writers block in a few hours across several days mostly at 3 in the morning and then i edited it at 4am so please forgive the mistakes if they are there and/or how mediocre it is....the quality is just a niche now..................also this is really not the fic i intended to enter svt tag with but when has anything ive planned Ever worked out
> 
>  **quick warning 4 references to kissing while drunk and also references to a blowjob that happened while both participants were high**
> 
> enjoy!!!!!! (hopefully)

14:26

 

“Can you read this?” Soonyoung asks, rolling over on the floor until his head is pillowed on Wonwoo’s thigh, holding his essay up in front of Wonwoo’s face.

Wonwoo breaks out of his studying induced trance, registering the ticklish feeling of Soonyoung’s hair against his skin through the hole in his jeans, first, and then the size 12 times new roman words in front of him as they sharpen into focus, blinking. “What?” he says.

“Not the essay, you idiot,” Soonyoung says, shaking the paper, “what the hell did my professor write? I can’t read her handwriting.”

Wonwoo squints. “Uh,” he says, tilting his head. “It just looks like a scribble, honestly. Or a bunch of cursive N’s?”

Soonyoung sits up, exasperated. “That’s what I thought,” he says, frowning. “But that’s not really the expected commentary for an essay about Balinese chicken fighting, y’know?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” Wonwoo says, because it’s supposed to be easier to be honest, and he knows it’ll make Soonyoung’s face work its way into a malleable smile, make the bags under his eyes disappear.

Soonyoung barks out a laugh, like he’s shocked that Wonwoo’s got even half a sense of humor, and then grins. He leans over Wonwoo to peer at the textbook he’s long abandoned next to him on the rug. “What are you working on?”

Wonwoo glances over at his textbook in a panic, knowing he’s mostly been staring at Soonyoung sprawled out on his stomach on the floor, flipping through the pages of his freshly graded essay, watching him make faces as he reads, idly scratch the back of his calf with his opposite foot, his cheek squished up under his eye as he holds his head up with one hand. The summer semester is long, and Wonwoo keeps getting—distracted. “Magnetism,” he blurts, eyes scanning across the glossy page for the first bolded word. “Y’know, magnetic fields and all that stuff.”

“Didn’t we learn that freshman year?” Soonyoung asks, picking up Wonwoo’s textbook, leaning back against the couch with him, knocking elbows.

Wonwoo nods. Back when they were both undeclared freshman, Wonwoo got tossed into a mid-level physics lab, and then he met Soonyoung. More accurately, Soonyoung leaned across their desks on the third week of lecture, and joked to Wonwoo that magnetism is just a powerful force that causes objects to be inexplicably attracted to refrigerators. Wonwoo had to slap a hand over his mouth to stop from laughing, because the class was boring enough that just about anything at that point was funny, the same way that laying on your back too late at night really just makes you want to laugh.

Wonwoo’s a physics major now, even with his and Soonyoung’s joint lab scores tanking his intro grade, and he knows better than that, but sometimes he like to think magnetism is a force that causes Wonwoos to be inexplicably attracted to Soonyoungs, or a force that makes Wonwoo want to press his face into a bucket of wet cement every time Soonyoung gets a little too close, gets a little too comfortable; the ache in that pull so big and so powerful Wonwoo’s a little afraid he will start to become it.

 

 

11:57

 

Soonyoung slides the window open with great effort, the whole thing poorly fitted and rusty around the edges with age. “Jesus,” he says, leaning out poking Wonwoo’s stomach, laid out across the fire escape with a book in his hand and his head pillowed on his bent other arm. “For a second I thought you had gone back to your dorm.”

Wonwoo smacks Soonyoung’s hand away with the spine of his book. “I’d rather die. The AC is still out in my building—plus, your fire escape gets one hell of a breeze off the river.”

“Try enjoying that wind in the winter, Wonwoo,” Soonyoung says, lifting an eyebrow. “And you shouldn’t lay like that. It’s bad for your back.”

Wonwoo pretends not to have heard him, stretching obnoxiously, faking a yawn, the long line his body briefly makes looking similar to the vines spiderwebbing their way across the railings. He goes back to his book, crossing one leg over the other. Soonyoung stays where he is, arms folded over the windowsill with his chin resting atop them, one eye scrunched closed where the sunlight throws itself sideways across his face.

“Well?” Wonwoo says, peeking up at Soonyoung over the top of his book again. “You gonna come outside or what?”

Soonyoung hums, fingers tapping along his chin as his expression molds into a mischievous smile. “Nope,” he says, sitting up, hands coming up to grip the bottom of the open window. “I think—” he leans back, pulling down on the frame, “—I’m actually going to lock you out—”

Wonwoo doesn’t move fast enough; Soonyoung twists the latch on the window and snickers at him through the smudgy glass of it, and Wonwoo accidentally drops his book in the process, watching it fall through the slats beneath him. He scowls at Soonyoung, who in turn waves back at him with a smile and wiggling fingers, relaxing back on the couch in the exact same exaggerated manner Wonwoo had done only minutes ago, and pretends to be asleep.

Last time Soonyoung did this, it was because Wonwoo made a particularly awful pun, and Wonwoo had to climb down the fire escape, then back up the narrow echoey staircase in Soonyoung’s building, because the elevator was broken, trekking up all the way to the sixth floor. If he hadn’t dropped his book, Wonwoo might be content to stay out here until Soonyoung takes pity on him in a few hours, since the weather is nice and he had something to kill time with, but gravity is a relentless force, and his book is facedown in the alley with the pages split open, and—well.

Wonwoo starts making his way down the fire escape, and he _knows_ he’s got it bad. He’s got it climb-down-a-rusty-fire-escape-and-then-back-up-six-flights-of-poorly-lit-stairs-for-you bad. Fucking physics. He supposes the useful thing about gravity is that it helps you find the ground, despite the stumble, the scabs, the inevitable fall.

Funny, then, how Wonwoo just keeps ending back up right outside Soonyoung’s door.

 

 

16:44

 

“Get off me,” Wonwoo whines, knocking Soonyoung’s arm from its place curled around his shoulders, “it’s too humid to touch at all.”

Soonyoung puts his arm right back where it started; slung across Wonwoo’s shoulder, the crook of his elbow pressed against the nape of Wonwoo’s neck. “I’m not touching you,” he says, grinning sideways at him, hair slightly damp, water hanging in the air after a too-warm autumn rain.

Wonwoo presses his glass of water against his temple, the ice inside of it clinking. “I can literally see your hand on my shoulder.”

“No, seriously,” Soonyoung says, swinging his feet over the edge of the fire escape, holding the collar of his t-shirt away from his neck, airing it out. “I swear you told me this once—well, you might have been high at the time, but—don’t we all have electrons on the surface of our skin? ‘Cause we’re all made of atoms, right?”

“Sure,” Wonwoo says. That’s basic physics. Freshman midterm type shit.

“And the electrons are so busy repelling each other that all anyone can do is get really, really close.” Soonyoung drops his arm, knocks his shoulder against Wonwoo’s. “You said it yourself.”

Wonwoo makes a face. He hates when Soonyoung gets clever with him, though he remembers what Soonyoung’s talking about now; months ago, crammed into Wonwoo’s dorm room bed, Soonyoung had laughed when Wonwoo first told him, grinned lopsidedly and said, _well that’s kinda weird, if everything is just almosts, right? Everyone just gets super close. Mega close. Nuclear style._

Back then, Wonwoo wasn’t sure if he and Soonyoung were friends, or something else entirely. In fact, Wonwoo’s not completely sure right now.

Sometimes, with Soonyoung, Wonwoo wants to feel the smallest distance he possibly can. Dreams about it, even, because maybe there aren’t any electrons in dreams.

 

 

19:16

 

Wonwoo pushes Soonyoung’s apartment door open—he rarely locks it, but Wonwoo has an extra key, just in case. It’s dark inside, but a wash of yellow spills into the room and out onto the fire escape when Wonwoo flicks the lights on. _It’s just me,_ he calls out, and then slides the window open.

Wonwoo sticks his head out. “How’d you even get out here?” he says, looking at Soonyoung, sat upright against the brick on the metal fire escape, cold under his calves with his legs set straight out in front of him, parallel lines.

“Adrenaline, I think.” Soonyoung laughs when he says it, but it rings a little hollow, bounces back in the fall air like it hardly left his mouth in the first place.

Twenty minutes ago, Soonyoung called Wonwoo’s phone, spoke tightly into the receiver, the wind howling lowly through the sound of his voice, tinny and foreign through the speakers. _Can you come over and help me back inside the window? I don’t think I can get up._

Two weeks ago, Soonyoung nearly tore a tendon in his quadricep in a dance studio on the other side of campus, got sent to the hospital, then came back with a brutal physical therapy regimen and orders to relax. The problem is, Soonyoung can’t relax; he’s a pusher, and even when he does all his exercises early every morning, he does too much too fast, takes it a little too far.

Wonwoo ran most of the way to this building, because by the time Soonyoung hung up the phone, it was already getting dark, which meant it would be getting cold—

Right now, Wonwoo smiles, all his teeth revealed in two neatly arranged rows, smiles like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Wonwoo slides through the window, the sound of his shoes hitting the fire escape ringing, the whole structure quaking with the added weight.

He huffs, bending down to grab Soonyoung by the elbows, pulling up until he’s standing precariously with his arm slung across Wonwoo’s shoulders, gingerly balanced on only one foot. Soonyoung winces as he struggles his way through the window, bad knee bending slowly as his face twists with pain. He has to lean on the wall to stay standing as Wonwoo follows him back inside.

It’s a shapeless feeling, Wonwoo decides, laying Soonyoung back in his bed, the solid weight of his body in the palms of Wonwoo’s hands, wondering just how much force it took to tear his tendon this way, what angle, just how fast—

Soonyoung hisses when the mattress shifts, and Wonwoo moves to stand up straight. Leaned back on his hands, Soonyoung flexes his feet, points his toes, watches the muscles tighten and strain, feeling a pain that burns without any location in particular.

“I’ll get you some ice,” Wonwoo says, leaving the room, which mostly just means giving Soonyoung the chance to laugh at him through the doorway as Wonwoo hits the plastic tray against the counter to loosen the chunks, and they all inevitably fall to the floor.

It takes Wonwoo a while to find something suitable to dump all the ice in, settling for a plastic bag he pulled from underneath the sink. He brings Soonyoung a glass of water so he can take the painkillers sitting resolutely on the bedside table, an overly strong prescription he hates taking because of the way it makes him feel; hazy, untethered, heavy as wet earth. Wonwoo putters around the apartment for a while, cleaning things up, turning the lights off, collecting dishes in the sink, then peeks back into Soonyoung’s room to tell him goodbye.

He’s rolled onto his side, a pillow tucked between his knees, and he looks back at Wonwoo with half closed eyes, the medication kicking in, fighting the tide of sleep as it drags him down, down, down.

Wonwoo feels Soonyoung’s sleepy gaze on him as he shrugs on his jacket; a thin thing he only gets to wear in crisp weather like this each fall, searching for his keys he’s sure he set down somewhere by the door.

“Bye,” Wonwoo calls, soft, so as not to be heard by anyone elsewhere, hand gripped tight around the doorknob. It feels wrong to leave but also wrong to stay, so Wonwoo hovers before the threshold longer than he should.

From the bedroom, Soonyoung makes a disgruntled noise, rolling onto his back, head turned to the side, cheek pressed to the pillow, his good leg bent at the knee and sticking up from the blankets

“What?” Wonwoo says. He doesnt turn the lights back on. Just waits there in the dark.

“The city’s dangerous at night,” Soonyoung says, voice low in his chest, a drained bathtub of a sound; rusty and wet, disappearing. “Don’t go home.”

 

 

11:33

 

“Is it boiling?” Soonyoung calls, dripping ice water on the floor as he shakes snowflakes from his hair, leaning inside from the fire escape.

Wonwoo makes a vague noise, gesturing for Soonyoung to come back inside, watching from over his shoulder as Soonyoung tracks ice across the warped hardwood from his haphazardly thrown on boots, holding the baking pan of tightly packed down snow.

“You really never did this as a kid?” Soonyoung asks, peering over Wonwoo’s shoulder into the pot hissing on the stove, until his chin is hooked over the flat of it, making Wonwoo’s skin itch beneath his sweater.

“Nope,” Wonwoo says. “Never really had a sweet tooth.”

Soonyoung presses closer, a hand skimming down the side of Wonwoo’s ribcage to nudge him to the side, stealing the wooden spoon. “You think it’s been bubbling long enough? I was bad at chemistry.”

“So was I,” Wonwoo laughs. In fact, that’s mostly why Wonwoo ended up in that freshman year physics class at all. Geology was full, and there was no way Wonwoo was suffering through fifteen weeks of covalent bonds and ionic compounds ever again after highschool. Wonwoo showed up to academic advising ready to beg for someone to be kicked out of the class so he could take their place, only to find that every physics lecture was sitting around with at least ten open seats.

Soonyoung makes a noise in the back of his throat, grabbing the pot by the loose, wobbly handle that’s in need of a tightened screw. “Here goes nothing,” he says, dumping the sizzling maple syrup mixture over the snow in long rows.

“That’s it?” Wonwoo asks, incredulous, watching it cool and harden to the vibrant color of amber. Soonyoung had been talking his ear off about maple snow candy for the better half of the summer, and somehow Wonwoo had ended up craving it too, even if he’s never tried it before. If he knew it was this easy to make, he would have just crushed some ice.

Soonyoung rolls the candy—still soft enough to bend—onto popsicle sticks he made Wonwoo buy at the dollar store, and then shoves one into Wonwoo’s mouth. The taste of it is painfully sweet, tacky against his teeth, gluing his jaw together momentarily before it all melts in his mouth, and Soonyoung grins at him, watching Wonwoo’s face change.

“Good, right?” Soonyoung says, all the vowels and consonants twisted around and tangled up around the taffy.

Wonwoo wants to say _yeah, or yes,_ or _sure, it’s good_ , but he can’t seem to get around the idea that if they kissed right now they’d taste exactly the same, like quantum entanglement, all the information written out and transported across anything that calls itself distance. Soonyoung presses closer, unaware, holding another popsicle stick in front of Wonwoo’s face, the saccharine sweet smell of it burning in his nose. “Want another?” he says, the shape of his eyes when he smiles elastic, the color of them darkening like a bruise.

Wonwoo says nothing, and opens his mouth.

 

 

22:34

 

Wonwoo struggles with the lock on Soonyoung’s front door; there’s two different handles that need to be turned at the same time, though Wonwoo still doesn't really know what the second one is for.

The frame swings open with a creaky noise from the hinges, and Wonwoo is hit with a wave of cold air and the underwhelming smell of an old air freshener that’s been plugged into the wall for a little too long. In Wonwoo’s phone, he’s got a rambling text from Soonyoung sitting in his inbox about what the job of house sitting for him involves while he’s out of state for a dance competition, though he hasn’t bothered to read it, considering Soonyoung probably forgot half the information anyway, and Wonwoo’s done this before.

The first thing he does is turn on the heaters; mostly to keep Soonyoung’s fish from freezing and dying, but also because Soonyoung said he could stay the nights if he wanted, and Wonwoo’s roommate _snores._ The heating units rumble to life, and Wonwoo loots around in the junk drawer for the fish food, watching Soonyoung’s beta swim around in lazy circles in the half dark.

He flicks on the light in the kitchen, one of the bulbs always buzzing lowly, and fills a glass in the sink to water Soonyoung’s plants.

More technically, they’re Wonwoo’s plants, rooted loosely in a couple small terracotta pots that Soonyoung gave him on his birthday two years ago, but Wonwoo’s dorm doesn’t get enough natural light, so they reside on Soonyoung’s fire escape until Wonwoo remembers to take them in when it starts to snow, and then they sit in the kitchen windowsill ‘til the weathers warms up again. Each year they lather, rinse, repeat.

Peering out the dirty glass, Wonwoo laughs softly to himself, takes a picture, and texts Soonyoung. _You forgot to take my plants in again._

 _Sorry!!!_ Soonyoung texts back, while Wonwoo’s halfway out the window, attempting to reach for the pots without having to step out into the snow. He’s almost stretched far enough to hook his fingers around the edge of one when—

“Wonwoo?”

Wonwoo’s  vision snaps up the rusty stairwell that leads up to the fire escape for the next floor, and his eyes find Minghao’s face peeking around the railing, Seokmin’s arms slung across his shoulder, the other diagonal across his chest, washed dark shades of green and blue in the dark. Minghao is Soonyoung’s upstairs neighbor—he once came down the fire escape with two extra mugs of homemade hot chocolate and a smiling Seokmin, knocked on the window until Soonyoung finally let him inside, which was almost immediately, and that’s when Wonwoo found out that this was some kind of regular activity they did, and Minghao had heard _all_ about Wonwoo, which made him feel red and hot and slightly interesting.

Wonwoo gives up and climbs out the window, picking up the plants one by one. “Hi,” he says. Seokmin waves.

“I thought Soonyoung was out of town,” Minghao prods, but he smiles a little sideways like he’s got a secret, something hidden up his sleeve.

“I’m house sitting,” Wonwoo says. “Or—I mean—apartment sitting.” He cradles the potted plants in the crook of his arm, defensive against Minghao’s prying smile, the slightly intimidating look of Seokmin comfortably folded around all his angles like a piece of origami paper. Snow seeps into Wonwoo’s socks through the ankles of his poorly put on shoes.

“ _Ah_ ,” Minghao says, drawing out the vowels of it, one corner of his lip quirking up. “I see.”

Wonwoo fidgets. He feels like a bug under a magnifying glass. If Minghao was wearing glasses, Wonwoo’s certain he’d be adjusting them right now, looking mischievous and all knowing. “What are you guys doing outside?”

“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight,” Seokmin replies. Minghao has turned his head all the way, just to look at him talking. “I wanted to see a falling star.”

 _Meteors have nothing to with stars,_ Wonwoo wants to say, but he can feel the phantom ache of the punch Soonyoung would land on his arm for even thinking it, and shuts right back up. Wonwoo certainly gets the idea though—maybe there’s something kind of romantic about it; tiny bits of rock and cosmic dust blazing up and burning out as it falls through the atmosphere, bright white lines against the dark blue backdrop of the milky way.

Minghao tips his head back, looking up. “Kinda hard to see, though, this far inside the city.”

Wonwoo nods, unsure what it is that Minghao wants him to say. Picking up the last of the three plants laid out on the fire escape, he looks skyward, too; a few pinkpricks of yellowish-white fighting faintly against the light pollution, like tiny holes punched through craft paper.

Wonwoo decides that if he had to choose, the stationary stars are the ones he likes so much better; impossibly far away, flickering like shorted out bulbs—traveling old starlight, so many of them that have long since turned to dust, and all that's left is the light that exploded outwards, careening towards Wonwoo over years and years and years. Like this, the distance between destinations manifests in time; _I know how far you are by how long it takes._

It’s been a while since Wonwoo met Soonyoung, so he wonders how far apart they started, if the halfway point has already been passed up, run right over and discarded. If how far they are is how long it takes, all Wonwoo’s got left do is just wait.

 

 

22:55

 

Back inside the apartment, Wonwoo puts the plants down in the kitchen window, and his eyes catch on the post-it note stuck to the fridge thats says _eat my leftovers so they don’t all go bad_ and _I even made my bed for you!!_

Wonwoo has slept in Soonyoung’s bed before, but that was after a party that dragged on into bizarre hours of the early morning, sometime back in the beginning of sophomore year. Wonwoo doesn’t remember exactly what the party was for—all he knows is that he ate a shit ton of edibles before he actually knew they were edibles, and then somehow ended up flat on his back on Soonyoung’s comforter with an equally fukced up Joshua Hong’s mouth trailing down his abdomen, hand skimming up Wonwoo’s chest to put his fingers in his mouth.

Wonwoo came with one knee up over Joshua’s shoulder, his face pressed into a pillow, and an incredibly pathetic moan, after which he went right ahead and passed out. Soonyoung found him a couple hours later, at least with the dignity of somehow having his boxers on, and then they never talked about it again.

Right now, Wonwoo stands in Soonyoung’s bedroom doorway, and the only thing he can think about is how it probably smells like Soonyoung’s overly fragrant shampoo—Wonwoo can never quite place it. For a while he was convinced Soonyoung’s hair smelled exactly like a homemade candle his aunt gave him when he graduated from high school, but then he switched his brands, and Wonwoo’s still stuck figuring it out.

Soonyoung said he made his bed, but the longer Wonwoo looks at it, the more it becomes apparent that he actually just threw his blankets down on top of his screwed up sheets, and the whole thing is kind of a incomprehensible mess. It’s not like Wonwoo has it in him to be shocked about it; he’s known Soonyoung for a over two years now, and there’s only about one thing left he could do that would catch Wonwoo off guard.

In the blankets, Wonwoo lays flat on his back, and thinks about how the first place he learned that sounds travel faster through solids than air was right here in this bed, Joshua’s voice rumbling through the wiry muscle of Wonwoo’s shoulder, and then again a few hours later with the chime of Soonyoung’s startled laugh at the sight of him, his mouth covered by his hand.

 _No need to be shy,_ Soonyoung had teased, though in the memory his ears are a little bit red. _I’m pretty sure everyone already heard you._

 _Don’t make fun of me,_ Wonwoo had grumbled, Soonyoung’s hand sliding airily across the space between his shoulder blades when he rolled over to hide in the pillows, old radiator hum vibrations where skin meets the skin.

 

18:31

 

“Are you leaving right now?”

Wonwoo makes a shivery sound as he nods, the cold air from outside still trapped inside his coat.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, “my car’s running out front in the pick-up space and everything.”

Soonyoung laughs and moves to hand over Wonwoo’s backpack; he forgot it here a night or two ago, didn’t realize he needed his laptop until he was packing last minute to go home for Christmas, sending a poorly spelled and frantic text Soonyoung’s way.

Wonwoo stares. He’s leaving later than he expected, and Soonyoung is already in his pajamas; ratty flannel pants and a faded black shirt that reads _mudslide_ across the chest in massive red capital letters. From the unkempt state of the living room, it looks like he had been watching a movie; blankets falling from the cushions to the floor, half empty bowl of popcorn laid out atop the coffee table.

“Tell your mom I said hi,” Soonyoung says, stretching out the tilt of his smile when Wonwoo takes his bag. “And that I’ve been taking care of you like she asked. It’s the ultimate Christmas gift.”

“No way,” Wonwoo replies, struggling to maneuver the straps of the backpack over his puffy coat. “She already likes you way better than me as it is.”

Soonyoung grins, because he knows its slightly true; Wonwoo’s mom met Soonyoung when she was helping Wonwoo move into the dorms again sophomore year, and Soonyoung showed up in the doorway complaining about how Wonwoo should just move in with him already and make his rent a little cheaper. Still, Soonyoung jokes that he would give Wonwoo the friends and family discount, which probably meant Wonwoo would somehow make up for that money by paying for all the takeout they’d have to eat, seeing that neither of them are particularly skilled in the kitchen at all.

“Should I call you in a few hours to make sure you haven’t fallen asleep and crashed?” Soonyoung says, waving his hand in front of Wonwoo’s face.

“Maybe,” Wonwoo replies. Even if Soonyoung did call him, he doubts he would hear it over the  car rattling around him, a shaky noise that always gets doubled up and refracted through the phone. Wonwoo’s got a horrifyingly old Toyota corolla he bought back in highschool, and the thing is barely holding itself together on the city side streets, let alone a few hours down the freeway in the snow. Soonyoung’s been strapped into the passenger seat enough times to know.

“Alright,” Soonyoung says, placing the palms of his hands on Wonwoo’s shoulders, turning him around. “I’ll let you go. Your mom’s not gonna like me as much if she finds out I’m the reason you’re still driving home this late at night.”

Wonwoo lets himself get pushed out the door, even if he desperately wants to stay, wants to puzzle piece himself next to Soonyoung on the couch and bury his face into the soft curve of his shoulder, confess to him if he could just find the words. Right now, Soonyoung’s hair is parted funnily down the middle, and it makes him look both very old and incredibly young—Wonwoo wants to turn around and fix it, bring Soonyoung’s bangs right down over his forehead just to watch him push his hands back through it, then start the habit all over again.

Halfway down the hallway, Wonwoo turns around, catches Soonyoung peering out of his apartment, watching him go.

“See you in a few days,” Wonwoo calls. “New Years, I promise.”

Outside, the roads are slick with ice and dangerous. “Drive slow,” Soonyoung calls back. Even he knows that the forces required to keep a car going straight on ice are incredibly overcomplicated, that bright white headlights burn the eyes twice as hard in the dark. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; _let me go, make me stay, drive slow, drive fast, leave me alone, I already miss you terribly._

 

00:49

 

Soonyoung slides the window open wider, sticking his head out, the haze of neon lights and rumble of bass vibrations spilling out behind him. Wonwoo looks over his shoulder.

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, grinning a little, like he’s told a joke and then forgotten to laugh, the sound of his voice like something with miles of empty space stuck inside of it.

“Hey,” Wonwoo echoes, instead of saying _sorry,_ looking back down at the alley framed between his feet, legs stuck through the gaps in the railing. Soonyoung throws his legs over the windowpane one after the other and sits down next to Wonwoo. The fire escape rattles.

“It’s doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Soonyoung says. Wonwoo makes the mistake of turning his head to meet Soonyoung’s gaze, is instantly reminded of the twin stars that were spinning in his eyes at midnight when Wonwoo kissed him, bass vibrations rattling through his bones, mouth sticky-sweet with the taste of cheap raspberry vodka, the sour burn of lemon chasers and salt—

“Are you still drunk?” Wonwoo asks. The winter air is cold and crisp, biting through the thin two layers Wonwoo has managed to shrug on, and he can’t feel the palms of his hands anymore, pressed to the icy metal slats he’s sitting on.

“ _Spec-_ tacularly,” Soonyoung drawls, looking down at the alley then, too. “You?”

“Not really,” Wonwoo replies, voice tight, caught in his throat, the obstruction the exact size and shape of a bloodied, red fist. Wonwoo only did three shots, so he’s really got no excuse to be doing things he shouldn’t be, even if he was kind of tipsy a little while ago, tactile and on his way to drunk. Soonyoung knocks his ankles together, and doesn’t say anything. Wonwoo can’t decide if he wants to lean closer or further away, if he wants to go back inside or stay here with Soonyoung until his fingers freeze off.

“Soonyoung,” Wonwoo starts, and his feet hurt from the ice, the cold air stings when is seeps inside his chest. “Can you go?” Wonwoo wants to go home, but doesn’t want anyone to see him do it.

Soonyoung turns to him, but Wonwoo doesn’t look at his face. Can’t.

“Okay,” he says gently, swinging his feet. “I’ll go soon.” He leans his forehead against the railing and smiles in a small way. Wonwoo feels his chest burn and twist and ache, tries to reconcile that he doesn’t know how to make any of this better sooner, or faster, or at all, at all, at all.

Soonyoung must see it on his face. Wonwoo turns his head away.

“You’re right,” Soonyoung says, pulling his legs back up through the railing. “I’ll go right now.”

 

 

22:12

 

Before the threshold, Soonyoung is strangely lit, blue light from the television all haloed behind him, the fluorescent yellow-green wash of the bulbs in the hallway smoothing his features out, a shadow angled down across his left eye, across the flat of his nose from the way the door hangs open. Wonwoo blanks. Stutters out a _Soonyoung, I really have to tell you something—_

Soonyoung blinks at him, his hand curled over the doorknob like a cobra.

What Wonwoo has been meaning to say is that he’s spent too long thinking about Soonyoung mostly in terms of classical physics, because he likes to keep things simple, and the basic laws of the universe are about as simple as it gets.

One of the first things Wonwoo ever learned about mechanics is that there’s only so much energy in the world, learned that all anyone can do is convert it, not create it, and for a long time now Wonwoo’s been running around thinking that maybe love works like that too, which is—wrong. Wonwoo’s not stupid, but that entire train of thought made him feel like an idiot.

What Wonwoo has been meaning to say is that love isn’t quantifiable to begin with, in fact it might be the only thing not bound by the chains of space and time, but even if it was, he wouldn’t need to stay within the confines of physics to love Soonyoung the way he wants to—

What Wonwoo has been meaning to say is that he’d definitely like to stop doing this whole thing with Soonyoung like a set of binary stars, but it’s hard. Wonwoo’s good with words, just not always the part where he has to say them outloud—

“If you kiss me,” Soonyoung blurts, “are you gonna stay the night this time?”

What Wonwoo has been meaning to say is that the most interesting part of physics is finding the place where all the rules stop working, where the laws don’t apply—

“You remember that I kissed you?”

What Wonwoo has been meaning to say is that spending one hour with Soonyoung feels like it only lasts two minutes, and all the time spent without him seems to just drag across the floor, that he thinks he’s finally figuring out what all his professors really mean by relativity—

“Of course I do,” Soonyoung says. “I’m not an idiot.”

 _Well I am,_ Wonwoo wants to say back, but doesn’t, instead just feeling himself turn maraschino cherry red, letting Soonyoung pull him timidly inside his apartment by the forearms, deciding he needs to let go of the science a little bit, give in to the language of dreams, of passion, the chaos of having no rules that need to be followed at all.

Technically, anyway, gravity is just a theory.

Until it's proven; Wonwoo floats.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hi thank u for reading !!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> if any of the physics is wrong just suspend disbelief i seriously had to read a textbook i stole from my uncle to write this im just a wee linguistics major with 4 braincells that are rapidly deteriorating
> 
> feel free to come find me on twitter @hochitown !! (if its on private, follow reqs are ok!! im not picky lol)
> 
> BYE!!!!!!!!!!


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